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Weekly ForceCast: February 17, 2012
Episode I is finally here in glorious 3D, but the question remains: what do the fans think? Find out as the ForceCast opens the phones and the voice mail box to hear about your first Star Wars 3D movie experience. Plus, Star Wars artist and trivia-meister Kevin Leill drops by to talk about his upcoming appearance on Kevin Smith's new AMC reality series Comic Book Men. Guests *Artist Kevin Liell Topics *The hosts begin the show by discussing the 3D premiere of The Phantom Menace, which opened last Friday. Jimmy talks about his experience seeing the film at a special AMC event in Chicago on Saturday, February 11th. He also recommends that listeners check out his photo report from the AMC event. *Jason and Jimmy welcome Star Wars artist Kevin Liell to the podcast to talk about his role on AMC's new reality TV show Comic Book Men. The show stars Kevin Smith as the owner of a comic book shop. Liell tells the ForceCast hosts how he got involved in the series as a Star Wars expert and says that the show features "a lot of banter about The Wars." He also talks about the Star Wars Trivia World Championship -- which he hosted at Celebration V and will be bringing back to Celebration VI -- and his viewing of The Phantom Menace 3D over the weekend. *Billy Dee Quote of the Week **In May 1999, Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segment parodied Billy Dee Williams. Cast member Timothy Meadows played Williams talking about the original theatrical release of The Phantom Menace. *The Jimmy Mac Investigative Report **Jason plays the clip from TPM of Kitster saying "This is SO wizard, Ani!" and Jimmy reports on what he learned about the use of the word "wizard" as an adjective. He says that the term is apparently used as a descriptor in other countries. "Keep in mind," Jimmy says to international listeners, "we don't really throw that around here in the States." Next, he turns to Lord of the Flies, in which "Wizard!" gets used as an adjective several times. Jimmy says he had always assumed that George Lucas created the adjectival form of the word for Episode I. *Jason mentions that he thought Hasbro would release a Kitster figure to celebrate The Phantom Menace. Jimmy says it's a shame that this didn't happen. Drawing on the success of Kyle Newman's campaign for Ben Quadinaros, he suggests that listeners ask Hasbro representatives to make the figure when they appear at Celebration VI. *Discussion then shifts to Episode I's 3D re-release, with Jason asking Jimmy to share his impressions of the 3D conversion at both Skywalker Ranch and the AMC theater in Chicago. **"The picture Chicago was significantly dimmer than what I saw in San Francisco ... I thought the sound quality was way weaker than what I got at Lucasfilm." However, he adds, "I still thought the presentation was superior to the Blu-ray." Jimmy says that his kids had a lot of fun at the Chicago event -- "it reminded me of a young me." **For Jason, expectations were met: he found the final battle between the Gungans and the droids to be very impressive; a few interior shots seemed too dark; and some scenes in the movie had noticeable 3D while other scenes looked completely 2D. **"Star Wars doesn't need 3D," Jason says. "Star Wars is the biggest star of all Hollywood ... I almost think that it's too big for 3D." "I really enjoyed it," he continues, "but I don't know that my enjoyment was enhanced by the 3D ... it was fine that it was there ... but I didn't think overall the experience was so much better because it was in 3D." **Jason reports that TPM 3D came in at #4 with a $23 million domestic haul. ***Jason says he's disappointed at the film's ranking, but Jimmy notes that The Vow (which came in at #1) was a romantic comedy released over Valentine's Day weekend and it was almost guaranteed to vastly outperform the competition. Furthermore, he says that Lucasfilm will probably not be dissuaded by Episode I's relatively low performance. ***"We don't know what the threshold was, do we?" Jason asks. Jimmy confirms this and says "it was a gamble" that he believes "paid off." For a 13-year-old film that's generally considered to be the black sheep of its series and that was just released on Blu-ray, TPM 3D did pretty well, he says. Significant quotes *"You just get so much more Kitster." -- Jimmy Mac, on seeing Anakin's best friend in TPM 3D.